Chapter 31 #2
So many questions flowed through my mind, and I had no idea where to start.
He’d actually done it. Over the last twelve hours, from the time I received the envelope and realized its implications to walking into this house no more than five minutes ago, I’d had a lot of time to think.
I’d spent that time convincing myself whoever sent this envelope was only messing with us.
There was simply no way in hell Lane Lawless, my Lane, had taken a life.
And at twenty, no less?
Absolutely fucking not.
To have him confirm it now quite literally knocked me on my ass.
And he didn’t sound the least bit sorry about it.
“What happened?”
“I’m not going to tell you any details, sunny,” he said, eyes pleading with me not to press the issue further. “You’ve been through enough, and honestly, the less you know the better. Plausible deniability and all that.”
“Is there any chance you could get caught? That even after all this time, whoever is sending this shit to us will turn you in?”
Lane shook his head. “I covered my tracks well,” he said. “Whoever is behind these packages, they might think they know what happened, but they’ll never find enough evidence to make anything stick. The only people in the world who know the truth are me, you, and Trey.”
I frowned. “Trey?”
“When I got my envelope, I had him do some digging into the people involved in the case, particularly that fuck ass detective, Chadwick. He conducted your initial interview, right?” I nodded. “Shortly after you signed that settlement, he quietly retired and moved to Florida.”
Indicating the envelope, I said, “You think he’s behind this?”
“No. Like I said, Trey looked into it. When he retired, the Boyd family set him up nicely. Regular deposits into his bank account, a nice house on the beach in Naples. He’d have no reason to come back and stir all this shit up.
As far as the Boyd family is concerned, their son’s death was an accident.
They were happy to leave it at that and move the fuck on.
“Unfortunately for Ryan, I wasn’t as forgiving.”
I was positively stunned. This man had done a lot for me over the years, had loved me, laughed with and at me, healed me, held me. A slew of other things, especially recently, that had done more to put me back together than anything else over the last sixteen years had.
But killing someone?
“But why?” I asked, though I could probably guess. “Why did you do it?”
Lane looked me dead in the eye and in no uncertain terms said, “Because he hurt you, Sutton. And for that, he no longer deserved to exist.”
My entire perspective of Lane shifted in that moment, like the Earth’s plates colliding with each other, rocking the very foundation on which my opinion of him had been built.
In many ways, he was the same Lane he’d always been. A bit broody if you didn’t know him, but free with his affection for the people he loved. He’d been a fun guy in our late teens and those first couple years of college, never taking anything too seriously.
As long as I’d known him, he wanted to be a cop—wanted to help people. Over the course of his career, even before he’d become an official deputy and had worked at the Dusk Valley Sheriff’s Department under the tutelage of his predecessor as a glorified errand boy, he had helped many people.
But once he joined the department in an official capacity, he became more rigid in his ways, more anal about adherence to the rule of law. I’d always thought it was because he had to. Because the bright-eyed optimism of his youth needed to be shed to usher in the seriousness of his adulthood.
Now, I realized how far off the mark I’d been.
Or, maybe not too far off but for reasons I couldn’t possibly have imagined.
He’d grown more uncompromising when it came to enforcing the law because, at one point, he’d compromised everything. Had betrayed the very thing he’d worked his whole life to protect in the most egregious way possible.
The only way he’d been able to look at himself, to keep pursuing his lifelong goals, was to flip a switch. To lock away the part of him that had escaped in the moment he’d committed murder and never allowed it to see the light of day again.
He’d done all of that for me.
If I hadn’t already been sitting, that realization would have taken me out at the knees. To be so…cherished and loved by this man that he’d destroy a part of himself in retribution for what someone else had done to me?
I didn’t deserve him.
We’d both been quiet long enough that I startled when Lane spoke again.
“I understand if this changes things for you. For us.”
“What?” I asked dumbly, still trying to pull myself out of my own swirling thoughts.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you left right now.
” He shrugged, feigning a nonchalance betrayed by the clench of his teeth, which had the muscle in his jaw ticking.
“I did something horrible, and I can’t even begin to guess how you feel about it.
If you never wanted to look at me again, I would understand. ”
Though not entirely confident my legs would carry me, I got to my feet and stumbled over to him, falling onto his lap.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I hugged him to me, clinging as tightly as I possibly could.
Burying my face in his neck and inhaling that deeply Lane scent. Warmth, a little spice, and safety.
“I’m glad he’s dead, Lane,” I murmured against his skin.
I lifted my head to meet his eyes. “You are?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel. When you asked about him when you first moved in, I was shocked you hadn’t known.”
“You figured I would’ve kept myself informed of his whereabouts.
” Lane nodded, but I shook my head. “After signing the settlement, I never wanted to hear or see his name again. I didn’t care what happened to him, as long as he stayed away from me.
But I’ll admit, I spent all this time looking over my shoulder, terrified he wouldn’t, and that I’d one day be forced to confront the thing that had broken me so badly. The thing that had taken you away.”
“I should’ve told you,” Lane said. “That he was dead, I mean. Not my part in it. I should’ve checked in on you more over the years.” He dropped his forehead against my collarbone. “I shouldn’t have been such an asshole every time we found ourselves in a room or at a scene together.”
I slid my fingers into his hair, gently massaging his scalp with my fingertips. “It was a defense mechanism,” I supplied. “I think if I had found out even a few months ago, it would’ve destroyed us.”
“Maybe,” he hedged. “And, truthfully, I just didn’t want you to hate me more than you already did.”
“No, baby,” I said softly, cupping his face in my hands so he’d look at me again, loving the way his beard tickled the skin of my palms. “I never hated you. I hated myself and spent a long damn time punishing myself for something completely out of my control.”
“And now?” His ocean eyes were glassy with barely repressed emotion, but earnest and hopeful.
“And now, I love you, and you love me, and that’s really all that matters.”
One of his broad palms came up to cradle the back of my head, and he slowly drew me in until our mouths collided.
Twin sighs of relief left us at the contact, and I sagged against him as I felt the tension bleed from Lane’s shoulders beneath my arms. It was a leisurely, gentle caress of our lips and tongues, neither of us making any move to take it deeper or faster.
For a long time, we enjoyed the simple act of deeply kissing the one we loved.
Long enough that we were both breathing hard when we finally pulled apart.
“I do love you, sunny. So fucking much. I’d do anything for you.”
“Whatever ‘anything’ is, let’s make sure it’s on the right side of the law from now on, okay?”
Lane chuckled, then pressed gentle kisses to the tip of my nose, my forehead, and my cheeks.
“Okay, baby.”
Twenty minutes later, I finally crawled into bed to get some sleep, both physically exhausted from being unable to sleep during shift last night and emotionally from my conversation with Lane.
As I lay there, willing sleep to come, I realized the final walls I’d kept around my heart had been smashed to pieces. Now that the weight of possibly seeing Ryan again was lifted, and all my and Lane’s demons were finally out in the open, I felt freer than I had in years.